


Unbreak Broken

by auselysium



Category: One Life to Live
Genre: Addiction, M/M, TW: drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:27:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3916336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auselysium/pseuds/auselysium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyle stands a few feet away, his arms hanging limply by his sides.  His shoulders are bunched up by his ears and his eyes are puffy and raw.  Yesterday he had almost looked normal, tired and deflated, but better than the morning after he was arrested.  But now he looks completely worn, as insubstantial and frail as a ghost.  He looks, Oliver realizes with a clenching of his heart, like a drug addict.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: Where "back in college" had a different ending. There were two things I wanted to play with: An openly gay Oliver and having Kyle’s law troubles occur at the same time as their romance. I took liberty with all the legal matters, but I did do a good deal of research about the drugs that I had Kyle take. Also, since we are writing in a soap fandom, I allowed myself to be slightly more cliché then I‘m used to but I think it fits with these two.
> 
> And just so you know, regardless of the angst, a very happy ending is guaranteed.

  _Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t find me attractive.  
Look me in the heart and tell me you won’t go.  
Look me in the eye and promise no love is like our love.  
Look me in the heart and unbreak broken.  
    - Where Does the Good Go, Tegan and Sara_  
  
  
  
It takes two creamers and at least two sugars to cut through the black swill that is passed off as coffee in the Llanview Police Department break room.  Sabrina Arlington, head dispatcher and self-appointed “keeper of the coffee”, takes her job seriously.  Clearly believing that the strength of the coffee she brews every morning has a direct link to the safety of the people of Llanview.  
  
Oliver Fish lifts a paper cup filled with the volatile concoction to his lips, blowing off some of the steam.  His stomach gurgles, already anticipating the damage it is about to incur.  But there is nothing to be done for it.  Oliver had been running late this morning and there hadn‘t been time to stop for a legitimate cup of coffee, one actually brewed from freshly ground beans instead of rock hard pellets.    
  
He smirks against the lip of the cup as  he remembers exactly why it had been so damned hard to get out of bed that morning.  It had been a long night spent between the sheets, but with little sleep and his body still aches deliciously in all the right places from it.    
  
“Morning, Lieutenant.”    
  
Oliver turns to see two fellow cops come in the room.  He smiles politely, lifting his cup in.  The younger man is a short, but incredibly compact, guy named Brody Lovett.  He is just out of the police academy and started with the LPD right around the same time Oliver was transferred in.  He and Oliver have gotten along well since they first met, bonding over being the new guys on the force.  Brody looks over his shoulder at Oliver now, a little grin on his square face as he stirs in his milk.  
  
“I hear you and McBain tracked down that guy who’d been calling the bomb threats into the post office.”   
  
“We did,” Oliver says, choking back another sip.  “Earlier this week.”   
  
“Strong work,” He says, reaching over to shake Fish’s hand.  
  
“Thanks, man.”   
“Yeah.  What a hero,” The other cop drawls.  “Wouldn’t want our mail blown up.”  This guy - Officer Brillman, a long time beat cop who has served the LPD for years but never advanced in rank - makes no effort to hide the distain in his voice or the sneer on his face.    
  
“It was a threat on a government building,”  Oliver says coolly.  “That is a federal offence, incase you’ve forgotten.”  
  
“Sorry,”  He says, waving his hands in front of him in mock surrender.  “Wouldn’t want to offend Lt. Fish, great protector of Netflix DVD’s and J.Crew catalogues.”    
  
“What’s your problem?”  Oliver demands, closing the distance between them to something more confrontational.    
  
“You know what my problem is.”  The man replies slowly, his eyes narrow and his lip curled.  
  
Fish had always known he wanted to work in law enforcement.  His father had been a cop and his dream ever since he was a little boy had been to follow in his father‘s footsteps.  But late in college when he realized that if he wanted to be a cop, then he would have to be a gay cop, he knew a thick skin and a series of coping mechanisms were crucial if he wanted to achieve his dream.  
  
He has silenced many skeptics along the way.  Those who did’t think a man can be both gay and a cop.  He did this, and still does everyday, by being the best police officer he can be.  He is the “go to” guy when computer or technology work is needed to solve a case.  He is a steady hand with a gun, level headed and yet quick to act in a time of crisis.  He is the kind of cop guys want to have protecting their back.  He works harder than anyone else on the force, which is why at the age of 26, he has already been promoted twice.  
  
He also learned early on at the police academy, that it is best to be upfront about his sexuality.  Keeping it hidden only fosters mistrust, the feeling that he is trying to keep something hidden.  He finds that if he tells guys right away that he is gay, they either don’t care or have enough time to get over it.     
  
Of course, then there are guys like Brillman.  Jerks who will never see him as part of the Brotherhood of Police.  When he had first graduated from the police academy, well trained but green, encountering men like that had crushed him.  He’d lay awake at night, not able to understand why these men couldn’t see that Oliver was the same as them.  That who he chose to take to bed at night had nothing to do with his ability to protect and serve.    
  
But with time and experience came acceptance.  Acceptance that there are some people so entrenched in their beliefs and afraid of anyone different, that Oliver alone cannot change them.  This acceptance is empowering to Oliver, allowing for some twisted thrill every time he puts one of these bigoted bastards in their place.      
  
Oliver returns Brillman’s unflinching stare, a small grin pulling at his lips.  “So tell me, is your main problem the fact that I’m gay?  Or because, even as a gay man, I outrank you,  _Sergeant_?“  Oliver enunciates the last word carefully, letting it sound like the insult it is meant to.  
  
Brillman’s glare falters, unprepared for Oliver to cut straight to the heart of the matter.  He sniffs sharply, rubbing at his stubbled chin and turns back to the coffee pot, realizing it probably isn’t so smart to continue harassing a superior officer.    
  
Oliver takes a moment to relish Brillman’s retreat before nodding curtly to a wide-eyed Brody and heading out to his desk.  
  
It takes several minutes for his heart to return to a normal speed and the electric flutter of adrenaline to evaporate from his veins and only then is he able to get to work.  He opens a new spreadsheet, and begins to enter data he has been collecting about suspicious activity at the Llanview Airport.  He is not even a quarter of the way down the first page when John McBain’s voice echoes across the precinct, nearly making Oliver jump out of his chair.      
   
“Fish.  My office.  Now!”  
  
Oliver quickly hit’s the save button, bracing himself for the reprimanded he is certainly in for after this morning’s pissing contest.    
  
McBain sits behind his desk, a dour expression on his unshaven face.  If Oliver has learned anything in the last few months, it is that McBain pissed off looks exactly the same as McBain happy.  He is harder to read than a 1000 page Tolstoy novel in Cyrillic. It is part of what makes him such a damn fine cop, and why Oliver is so glad to be working with him.  Well that, and he is awfully easy on the eyes.  
  
“There a problem, John?”  He asks, hoping his breathless words do not give away his uneasiness.  
  
“Sit.”  John orders.  He spins around in his chair and stands up in one graceful movement.  For a man as tall and lanky as John, he moves with surprising precision.  He opens the top drawer of the filing cabinet, pulling out a file folder, and drops it on his desk in front of Oliver with a dull thud.  
  
“We have a guy in lock up downstairs.  I need you to take him down to the court house for arraignment.”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“You.”  
  
“But I just started breaking down all that data you sent me from the air traffic tower…why can‘t one of the other guys take him?”  Taking offenders down to the courthouse is grunt work for low ranked officers, not someone like Oliver.  
  
McBain plants his palms wide on the edge of his desk and leans across it, a lock of dark hair falling across  his face.  This, instead of making him look fragile only helps to frame his piercing eyes.     
   
“Do you know a man named Kyle Lewis?”    
  
An uneasy quiver slinks coolly from Oliver’s heart to his stomach as he tries to swallow, but finds his mouth dry as a bone.   
  
 _Kyle Lewis._ The name echoes in his brain, rattling around and dislodging memories of a time in his life that is long since past.  Memories of uncertainty and insecurity replaced by comfort and safety.  First kisses and touches as boys grew into men beside side each other.  Feelings of love gained along with self-awareness.  Memories of love shattered.  Promises he made only to break them.    
  
“I knew a Kyle Lewis,” He finally sputters.  He wipes his hands down the length of his thighs, suddenly finding his palms damp.  “But it’s not like that is the rarest name in the world. What‘d this guy do?”  
  
“Sampson pulled him over last night on South Street for DUI.”  
  
Oliver feels his chest droop and he shakes his head, smiling to himself as he says, “That’s not my Kyle then.  He would never do something like that.”    
  
McBain turns towards him, his slowly arching eyebrow seeming to question Oliver‘s use of the possessive pronoun.    
  
“He was my…“  Oliver stops himself, blushing.  He picks up the file so as to occupy his hands.  “He was my  fraternity brother,”  He finishes quickly.  “Back in college.”    
  
McBain nods obligingly at Oliver’s answer but reads between the lines far too easily.  He isn’t the Chief Investigator for no reason.  He begins pacing along the far wall of the room.  “Well this Kyle had a blood alcohol was .083 when they brought him in.”    
  
“Just over the legal limit…”  Oliver comments, shuffling quickly through the papers to find something - an address, a birth date, anything - that might confirm that this Kyle really wasn‘t the guy who had been so much more than a frat brother to him at Llanview U.   
  
“Right, but Sampson put in his report that he failed the sobriety test like some one with a BAC twice that.”  
  
“How is that possible?”     
  
“Turns out alcohol wasn’t the only thing he had going through his system.”    
  
Oliver looks up at him with a confused look and McBain gestures to the file in Oliver’s hands, encouraging him to read the answer for himself.  Oliver flips to the third page, a standard arrest form filled out Sampson’s heavy, block writing.  Oliver’s eyes jump to the line delegated for reason for arrest.  Operation of motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol; suspected amphetamine use.  
  
“Meth?”  Oliver gasps, horrified at the thought of this hard drug having been brought to their city.  
  
“No, not crystal.  Prescription stuff…he had a vial of it stashed in his glove compartment.  They also found a vial of benzodiazepines and a few empty sample packets of that in his pocket.”  
  
“Benzo…What?”    
  
“Anti-anxiety pills.  It’s not uncommon to see prescription amphetamine addicts take those too.  One brings them up.  One brings them back down.  Although the benzos usually bring them too far down to function normally so then they need more amphetamines.  It‘s a pretty twisted cycle.”  
  
“Jesus,”  Oliver swears under his breath.  
  
McBain nods and begins pacing again.  “He didn’t have enough of the drugs on him for him to get slapped with an intent to distribute charge, but it was enough for it not to be an accident.  His behavior matched that of someone who had taken both those kinds of medication in the past twenty four hours,  and consumed a good amount of alcohol too.”  
  
“Where do you think he got it?  The drugs I mean?”  
  
“You don’t really see the brands he was using sold on the street, so this probably means he has access to the stuff.”  
  
“Access?”  
  
“Someone like a pharmacist or hospital employee.”  
 _  
Or a med student,_  Oliver thinks.   _Kyle always did want to be a doctor…_ That sinking feeling returns to his stomach.    
  
Oliver closes the file, placing it carefully back on top of McBain’s desk.    
  
“Well, it sounds to me like you really need to bring in someone from the drug task force.  You know that really isn’t my area of expertise.”  He stands, heading for the door, needing to get out of this room and out of this building.  He is in desperate need of fresh air.  
  
“He said it was your fault.”     
  
McBain’s words freeze him in his tracks.  
  
“What?”    
  
“Sampson said that after he arrested him and put him in the squad car, the guy started to get really tired, could barely keep his eyes open, but before he drifted off he started  mumbling, ‘This is Fish’s fault.  This is all Oliver’s fault’.”  McBain crosses his arms.  “Now Kyle Lewis might be a somewhat common name, but yours?  Seems a bit of coincidence, don‘t you think?”  
  
For a moment Oliver is too confused to even speak, but then he begins slowly, “Look, if this is the Kyle Lewis I knew in college, I haven’t seen or talked to him in years.  Why would he say that his arrest had anything to do with me?  Why would he say something like that?”  
  
McBain shrugs, the movement languid and cool and completely unsympathetic to Oliver‘s plight.  “Only one way to find out.”  
  
*  
  
The holding cells are located in the basement of the police department, a long hallway of windowless, musty, cement block rooms.  It is a hold over from when prisoners would actually serve their sentence here before Llanview out grew the set of ten rooms and built a full prison.  These days, perps rarely spend more than a night here before they are either released, or in this Kyle guy’s case, sent to the court house for further legal instruction.    
  
Even as Oliver descends the stairs, waiting as the warden opens up the first of several security gates, he is still in denial that the man in cell 5 will be the man he knew in college.  He is still firmly convinced that it will end up being some three hundred pound black man or a red head with tattoos and a silver hoop through his nose.  It simply can’t be that he will find Kyle sequestered behind the bars, even though logic and instinct tell him otherwise.    
  
His stomach does flips as he passes cell 1, cell 2.  His eyes hastily scan the empty cells for that familiar figure.     
  
He tries to remember the last time he saw Kyle.  Really saw him,  not just in a dream or a fantasy or some hazy memory.  It had probably been at some fraternity function around graduation where they had stayed on opposite sides of the room and avoided eye contact all night.  They, of course, had stopped talking to each other a long time before that.    
  
But that doesn’t mean Oliver still can’t remember the exact color of Kyle’s brown hair - not chestnut or walnut but a rich mahogany.  It doesn’t mean he can’t remember the sadness that always seemed to live in his eyes, even when he was happy.  If he is honest with himself, there is very little about Kyle that Oliver can’t remember.  Right down to how he likes his burgers done and how it felt when he would kiss from Oliver‘s lips to his jaw to his collar bone.  Kyle had left his mark on him in a way only your first lover ever can.   
  
As Oliver approaches the last cell, the lights seem to get brighter overhead.  As if the bare light bulbs have been specifically placed to shine their light on the sleeping figure who is curled against himself on the thin mattress.     
  
“Kyle?”  The single word slips from Oliver’s lips in the form of a question, his voice achingly tender.  But there is no doubt.  That sweep from spine to hip, the way those shoeless feet are tucked against each other is all too familiar to Oliver, having fit his own body up against it more times than he can count.   
  
It‘s him.    
  
His certainty is only further confirmed as Kyle pushes up on one arm, blinking against the garish light as he seeks out the source of his name.  His eyes are bloodshot and tired, sunk deep into his face.  When he sees Oliver, a completely mortified - or horrified - look flashes across his face.    
  
He makes a pathetic, demoralized groan at the back of his throat and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, hiding his face in his hands.  “Oh, you‘ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he mumbles.   
  
He cards his fingers through that mahogany hair and Oliver notices the way the bones work, far too visible and distinct under his skin.  He is so thin.  Oliver, too, has lost weight since college, thanks to the rigors of the police work and the days of constant beer binges and cafeteria food finally coming to an end, but Kyle’s weight loss isn’t the same.  His body isn’t fit or healthy, but frail, as if he is fading away.    
  
“What are you doing here?”  Kyle asks bleakly, dropping his hands between his knees but keeping his gaze determinedly cast towards the floor.  
  
“I work here.  I’m a cop.”  
  
Kyle snorts, giving Oliver’s uniform a mocking glance. “Really?  I hadn’t noticed.”  
  
Oliver lets out an exasperated sigh.  “My boss told me there was a guy down here named Kyle Lewis and I wanted…I needed to come see if it was really you.”  
  
Kyle looks at him, his lashes falling slow and heavy against his cheeks, his jaw set in an insolent line.  He looks so ashamed and yet so determined for Oliver not to notice that.    
  
“What the hell happened to you?”  Oliver breathes, wishing he could get closer than the cell will allow.   
  
“I got arrested,”  He answers lamely.    
  
“Really?  I hadn’t noticed,”  Oliver says snidely.        
  
Heat flares in Kyle’s eyes at having his own words thrown back at him, recognizing how quickly the tone of this conversation has slipped into one that matches their last.    
  
Their breakup had not been pretty.  One minute they had been basking in the afterglow, warm and safe tucked under the comforter of Oliver’s narrow bed, sharing those smiles of amazement at being allowed to know someone so intimately.  But then there had been a soft knock on the door, an innocent entrance into a presumed empty room to look for some misplaced gloves.  Oliver will never forget the revolted look on his mother’s face.  The look that landed just like a punch in the gut.  Kyle had run from his room, half naked and scampering for the rest of his clothes.  He’d had no idea that every tender, loving moment was about to be shattered by one mortified look in Oliver’s mother’s eyes.      
  
Because their relationship had existed in those days where the idea of being gay was the most horrifying offence Oliver could imagine.  It would have meant the destruction of every dream he‘d ever had.  The loss of his entire family.  Being gay would have been life ending.  So even though Oliver could admit that he loved Kyle, he couldn’t admit that he was gay.    
  
And so everything between them had been private, kept a secret from all those around them.  Out in public, among their frat brothers and to family and friends, he and Kyle were simply best friends. But behind closed doors, loved had bloomed.  A love the likes of which he had never felt before and hasn’t felt since.    
  
Which is why it hurts so much, even now, to remember the insults he threw at Kyle later that day.  Words of disgust and denial.  You’re a fucking pervert, It meant nothing and Don‘t ever come near me again.  He hadn’t meant a single one of them, yet, if he’d wanted to keep his family he’d  _had_  to mean them.  And that hopeless desperation had made the words all the more vicious.  Kyle had raged back, calling Oliver a coward and a liar, his normally raspy voice sounding positively ripped to shreds by tears.  Oliver had cried too, but only months later when he realized that it was far too late to take that kind of hurt back.   
  
And if it had been too late then, it is certainly too late now.  All Oliver can do now is his job.    
  
*  
  
They sit in the small waiting area just outside the cells a few minutes later as another cop, Officer Banks, retrieves Kyle’s things that had been confiscated upon his arrest.  They sit on opposite sides of the room, not looking or speaking to each other.    
  
“Did you ever get your phone call?”  Oliver blurts out, needing to fill the silence with something.        
  
Kyle lifts his head slowly from where it had been propped on a closed fist.  He inhales deeply through his nose, blinking away some of the bleariness in his eyes, looking at Oliver with all the disdain of a Siamese cat who has just been woken form her nap.    
  
“The guys said you were passed out by the time you got here last night.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kyle answers slowly. “I woke up earlier this morning and called my lawyer.  He should be at the courthouse by the time I get there.”    
  
“You have a lawyer?”  Oliver asks, confused.  
  
“He’s just some guy my sister used to date,”  Kyle says and closes his eyes once more.   
  
Officer Banks comes out of the storage room with a plastic tub full of Kyle’s things.  He leads Kyle through the standard release procedures, taking down a statement that confirms all his belongings have been returned to him in the same condition as when he was arrested.  Cell phone, shoes, wallet, a new looking leather jacket, a set of keys to a car that he won’t be able to drive anymore by the end of the day.  If his hands tremble slightly as he pockets his phone, his fingers itching for another item he’s gotten used to having in his pocket, Oliver doesn’t notice.  
  
Banks comes around the counter with a pair of handcuffs, open and ready to be put on.  Kyle technically isn’t released from police custody until he has been arraigned and hand cuffing the perpetrator is part of standard procedure.  But the moment Kyle sees the handcuffs, he tenses, recoiling away from Officer Banks and Oliver decides it is time to pull rank for the second time today.  
  
“Those won‘t be necessary today. I’ve got this one.”  Oliver steps up beside Kyle and takes a firm grip on his bicep as if to prove his point.  Banks looks from Oliver to where his hand is on Kyle‘s arm, obviously uneasy about breaking protocol.    
  
“Jeff,”  Oliver barks, snapping the younger man’s attention back to him.  “I said I got him.”    
  
Banks clips the cuffs back onto his belt.  “Whatever you say, Fish.”   
  
“This way,”  Oliver tugs gently on Kyle’s arm, leading him out the side door to the police station.  The squad car McBain has assigned him for the afternoon is parked by the curb and he opens the rear passenger door, motioning for Kyle to get in like a gentlemen might open the door for his date.  
  
“Thanks,” Kyle says softly, meeting Oliver’s eye fully for the first time that day.  He is clearly thanking him for more than holding the door.   
  
Oliver feels his cheeks flush and nods.  “Of course.”  
  
Oliver pulls out of the parking lot, his knuckles white on the steering where, his stomach in knots.  He wants to ask Kyle everything.  What was he thinking driving after drinking last night?  What drugs had he been on?  Why did he feel the need to take them?  Doesn’t he know better than that?  Had he stolen the drugs?  Bought them on the street?  And why, why, _why_ , had he said that this was all Oliver’s fault?  
  
But then another part of him simply doesn’t care about all that and just wants to pull Kyle’s body against his, tuck his head against Kyle’s neck and thank God or fate or whatever it is that has allowed him to see Kyle again.  
  
“So you really became a cop,”  Kyle pipes up from the back seat, interrupting his thoughts.  His tone has backed off considerably from its previously confrontational ledge and he almost sounds conversational.  Like he and Oliver have just bumped into each other at a bar and Oliver isn’t a police officer with Kyle in his custody.    
  
“I really became a cop.”  
  
“Glad to see you always got what you wanted,”  Oliver checks his rear view mirror and Kyle‘s pallid face fills the small frame.  His head is resting back on the head rest, eyes taking in the passing world outside.  There is a sheen of sweat on his brow, but he has his coat wrapped tightly around him.  He’s shivering.  Whatever drug had been in his system, his body is now reacting to the fact that it isn’t anymore.  Withdrawal, Oliver thinks.  He must feel like hell.      
  
“Are you cold?”  Oliver asks, aloud.    
  
Kyle meets his eyes in mirror, stubborn and heavy.  “I’m fine.”    
  
Oliver turns the heat up anyway.    
  
“How long you been on the force?”  
  
“Three years.  But I‘ve only been with the Llanview PD for a few months.  I was in Cherryvale before that.”  
  
He watches as Kyle nods, an actual smile - small as it may be - pulls on his pale lips.  “Three years and already a Lieutenant.  Why am I not surprised?”    
  
Oliver can’t help but smile too.  “What do you mean?”  
  
“You were always a total over achiever.  Double major, Dean’s list every semester, summa cum laude at graduation.”    
  
“Well, you weren’t exactly a slacker either, Mr. Pre-Med.”  Oliver teases back.  “You ever end up in med school?”  
  
Any light that had been glowing in Kyle‘s eyes is suddenly extinguished..  “I was.  For a while.”  
  
Their conversation comes to an abrupt and awkward end but thankfully they arrive at the court house a few minutes later, using the side entrance designated for people with police escort.    
  
The Llanview courthouse is also the county courthouse, so just like any other day of the week, it is a hot bed of activity.  DA’s and lawyers rush around with their suits and leather attaché cases.  There are people milling around as they wait to contest parking tickets or apply for marriage licenses.    
  
Kyle’s lawyer is nowhere to be found, so they are shown to a waiting room, a relatively quiet place compared to the rest of the building.  There are several long tables with benches on either side, a ring of chairs around perimeter of the room.  A few lawyers meet with clients, explaining how the trial will progress.  They discuss the best way to approach their impending trial in soft, practical tones.  A DA’s job is all so much less dramatic and sexy than those crime shows make it out to be.  
  
“You’ve seen other guys go through this before, right?”  Kyle asks.  He is slumped down in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, one foot bouncing nervously at the end of his ankle.    
  
“Of course.”  
  
“So,”  Kyle sits up higher in his seat.  “What’s the worst that can happen?”  
  
“I’m not a lawyer, Kyle.”  
  
“Just…tell me.”  Oliver can hear the genuine worry in Kyle’s voice so he sits up straight, snapping back into police mode.    
  
“Well, the laws for DUI are pretty clear.  You’ll lose your license for sure.  At least a year, probably longer.  There will be a substantial fine.  But with your case, it’s hard to know…there may be other penalties considering that there was more than just alcohol involved.  Possession of a controlled substance is a class D felony.  It can be... pretty serious.”   
  
Kyle lifts a fist to his lips, a pained look on his face as if he is fighting back tears.  “I just want you to know,” he says.  “All of this…it’s not what it looks like.”  
  
The words  _Then tell me what it is supposed to look like cause from where I’m sitting it looks like you’ve made some pretty awful choices_  are ready on Oliver’s tongue.  He spins in his chair to face Kyle, ready to unleash those reproachful words born out of something far more compassionate, when a tall man with dark hair and a sharply tailored gray suit cuts him off by his arrival.  
  
“Kyle.  Sorry I‘m late.  It took longer to get your records from the hospital than I anticipated.”  
  
Kyle pulls himself out of his chair, the motion looking like it takes far too much effort.  He shakes his lawyer’s hand, then sits back down.  “I’m just glad you’re here.”    
  
“Don’t mention it.”  He clasps the handle of briefcase with both hands, rocking on his toes, and looks from Kyle to Oliver waiting either for an introduction or for Oliver to leave them alone.  When neither happens the lawyer offers up his hand.    
  
“James Dimock, attorney.”    
  
“Lt. Oliver Fish, Llanview PD.”  Oliver jumps up from his seat to shake the man’s hand.   
  
“Look, I‘m sure you can understand that Kyle and I have a good deal to cover before the judge sees us.  I can take him from here.”    
  
“Of course,” Oliver says hastily.     
  
The right thing, the logical thing - the proper thing - would be for Oliver to just go.  He’s done his duty.  Kyle is safely delivered to his arraignment.  But Oliver’s feet feel like lead, weighed down under the burden of old regret and cannot move.  
  
There had been no closure between them.  No reconciled farewell.  No chance to apologize for the way things ended.  No chance to make things better.  There had been so much that Oliver had wanted to tell to Kyle but he had never gotten the chance.  He’s waited years to finally tell Kyle all that he meant to him, all that Kyle had given him but Oliver hadn’t had the strength to realize when it truly  mattered.    
  
Things could have been so different between us, Oliver thinks, pressing the knuckles of both hands together.    
  
“I’ll see you around, Fish.”  Kyle finally says, almost reading Oliver‘s indecision.  They are words that have the potential to sound hopeful but not when said in Kyle‘s gruff tones.  His dismissal is gloomy and final, accompanied by a heavy lidded look that begs Oliver to please just go.    
  
Oliver gives him a tight nod and takes a deep breath.  “Good luck, Kyle.”    
  
He turns for the door and finds himself, once again, walking away from Kyle.  Wondering if perhaps that was all he was ever destined to do.


	2. Chapter 2

Oliver drops the squad car off at the station, then goes into McBain’s office to inform him - not to ask him- that he will be taking the rest of the day off. 

John looks at him, either offended or impressed by Fish’s demands - it is impossible to tell, before giving him a terse, “Alright. See you tomorrow.” 

Oliver feels completely disoriented even as he makes the familiar drive home to his apartment. He has to question every step he takes up to the second floor landing, like he can’t quite trust the next stair to be where he expects it or for his apartment to be in the same place he left it in this morning. The world as he knows it has once again been thrown into complete chaos by Kyle Lewis. 

He shrugs off his coat, empties his pockets of his keys, wallet and phone and drops his blue LPD cap over the top of them. He rakes his fingers through his blond hair, loosening the cropped strands that have become matted to his skull after being under a hat all day. The knot in his stomach seems to have taken over his entire gut. His skin feels hot and his chest feels tight. 

In the living room, the TV is tuned to some awful daytime soaps. He’s home, Oliver thinks and can’t decide whether he is grateful or annoyed.

“Hey, you.”

The gentle voice of his boyfriend Nick Chavez fills his ears. He opens his eyes to see him padding towards him, grey sweat pants sitting low on his hips and a white tank top clinging to his strong torso. Nick has a body that would put most models to shame and Oliver sometimes wonders if he walks around like this on purpose, just to drive Oliver insane. 

Nick runs his hands, always so warm and gentle, up Oliver’s arms, sliding under the short sleeves of his uniform and he feels his shoulders slacken under the touch. Grateful it is.

“What are you doing home early?”

“I’ve had a hell of a day,” Oliver answers.

Nick pouts sympathetically which manages to make Oliver smile. Nick kisses him sweetly on the forehead then the cheek. Soon Nick’s luscious lips morph into something far more wicked and Oliver feels Nick’s tongue dab at his jaw. He drags his hands over Oliver’s ribcage, finally settling on his hips and with a dangerous smirk, pushes Oliver back against the door. 

“Maybe,” Nick breathes against his neck. “There is something I can do to help you forget about your day.” 

Nick’s eyes flash with the same passion that had kept Oliver up all night last night and Oliver tilts his chin, offering up his lips to him. He gives himself over to the sensation, letting Nick have his way with him right there against the door, hoping this will make the world seem right again.

Nick is fiery and passionate, everything a white-bread American boy would imagine a Latin lover to be. But regardless of his instability, Nick is also well-grounded and kind, making it so easy to be with him. Oliver worries sometimes, thought, that Nick has forgotten that their current living situation gives the impression that their relationship in far more serious than it actually is. 

They haven’t been together for nearly enough time for living together to make any sort of sense. It hadn’t been a declaration of commitment. They aren’t partners. Oliver hasn’t even told Nick he loves him yet or know if he does. Their cohabitation is an accident, a fluke in the timing. 

A few days after Oliver got his transfer orders, Llanview High School had contacted Nick asking him to fill in for the rest of the year while their art teacher went on maternity leave. It had been a great opportunity and after some discussion to ensure Oliver didn’t think Nick was doing this just to be with him, he agreed to the job. 

Nick had known he wouldn’t be making millions as a teacher and even though Oliver was getting a salary increase in Llanview, four years of out of state tuition and then two years of the police academy had left him with a hefty amount of debt. They both were going to need roommates to afford rent, so why not just live together?

Even if their decision had been a practical and not romantic one, Oliver would be lying if he claimed not to like the set up. There is something remarkable about tumbling through the door and into their bed at the end of a long day. Or coming home to the delicious smells of one of Nick’s grandmother’s recipes bubbling on the stove top. Oliver has never lived with a boyfriend before unless you count living just down the hall at KAD from Kyle.

Oliver breaks their kiss with an abrupt side step, leaving Nick staggering to catch his balance against the door. It’s been years since he’s thought of Kyle while being with someone else and the realization that he had been takes him by surprise.

“I should take a shower,” Oliver says, rubbing at the back of neck. 

Nick grins wolfishly. “Good idea.”

“No, Nick!” Oliver says too hastily. “I just need some time. Ok?”

Nick rests his hips back against the door and crosses his arms, eyeing Oliver with a peculiar look. “What happened to you today?” 

“Can I tell you after I shower?”

“Sure,” Nick nods slowly. “I’ll make you a sandwich because you probably didn’t eat today did you?”

Oliver looks at his shoes, smiling bashfully, and shakes his head.

“Figures.” As Nick brushes past him, Oliver catches the pocket of Nick’s sweat pants with his pointer finger, using the small piece of fabric to halt his progress to the kitchen. 

“Thank you,” He says, meaning it. Nick’s eyes soften and Oliver kisses him again before sending him along his way with a playful spank.

Oliver cranks the shower as high as it will go and soon the mirror is covered with fog. He tries to let his mind go blank as the hot water turns his skin pink. He tries not to think of Kyle and how sickly he’d looked under the lights in the cell. How thin and pale. He tires not to remember how much shame had been in his eyes, so much so that there hadn’t been room for anything else. He tries not to wonder what the judge will decide to do with his case. He tries, but he fails.

He spins under the shower, letting the water pelt his face. Jail time isn’t out of the question. He hadn’t looked on the arrest report, but the fact that Kyle already had a lawyer could mean that this wasn’t his first offense. That would mean harsher and longer penalties. He can’t understand how something like this could have happened to Kyle. He was always so put together in college, not at all the type to do something stupid like drive drunk or use illegal drugs. The thought that Kyle could end up in prison is petrifying and a wave of nausea surges so powerfully through him that Oliver throws himself out of the shower, hunched over the toilet for fear that he truly might get sick. 

His fingers clutch the side of porcelain, slipping on the cold surface as he gasps for breath, trying to fight off the bile rising in his throat. He is afraid for Kyle in a way he has no right to be. He is not Kyle’s lover. Not really even his friend. Until he had seen him this morning, lying in the cell, Kyle had been little more than a memory to Oliver, the intensity of their relationship muted and blurred by time. But now Kyle no longer dwells solely in murky remembrances of Oliver‘s past, but in the clear and definite present. Kyle is real to him again. Kyle’s trouble is real. And so are all the emotions - good and bad - that threaten to overwhelm him. 

“You alright in there?” Nick’s voice is muffled by the door and the still running shower. 

“Yeah, yeah…I’m fine,” He lies through clenched teeth. “I’ll be out in a minute.” 

Oliver sits back against the tile floor, his breath still coming fast and shallow. Goosebumps break out on his skin.

“Get your shit together, Lieutenant,” He pants into the steamy room.

But that is easier said than done.

*

There is a cup of tea placed next to his sandwich on the kitchen table when he finally emerges a while later. Nick is sitting patiently at the table, working on a lesson plan for the next day but he puts down his pencil as soon as Oliver approaches.

“You’re too good to me,” Oliver says, pulling out the chair and noting the placemat, perfectly folded napkin and small saucer of milk Nick has provided for him.

“Just sit down and eat.” 

His stomach is still too unsteady to even consider the sandwich, but the tea, if left black, seems palatable enough. He takes a sip, which seems to satisfy Nick.

“So…” Nick encourages, leaning over the table. “What’s got you all worked up today? I’ve never seen you like this before.”

Oliver wraps his hands around the mug, enjoying the heat that seeps into his fingers. “I just ran into an old friend today,” He says after a moment of staring blankly into the bottom of the cup.

“Ok. This… friend of yours…” Nick says, playing along with Oliver’s vagueness for the time being. “Did you run into him or something?”

“Ah, no, he umm…he was at the station. He’d been arrested. He got pulled over for DUI. But he was also in possession of some prescription drugs. Stuff that never in a million years would I have guessed he would get messed up with.”

“That’s awful,” Nick lays his hand palm up on the table in offer of support and Oliver readily accepts it, lacing his fingers with Nick’s. “Do you mind me asking who this mystery friend is?”

Oliver wonders what the statute of limitations is on agonizing to your current boyfriend about a former boyfriend. But Nick leans forward, cupping their joined hands in his palm. His big, honey colored eyes are soft and available. He really is too good to Oliver.

“It was Kyle Lewis.”

Nick’s eyes pop open a little wider and he sits back in his chair. “Kyle Lewis…as in the Kyle whose heart you broke while still pretending to be straight?” 

“The very one,” Oliver laughs pathetically. Then casts his eyes skyward, completely stricken. “But…we broke each other‘s hearts in the end.”

“You never told me that.”

“I guess I’d kind of forgotten about it.” He shrugs while thinking, Spend all my time trying not to think about it would be more accurate.

“Well, what happened? What did he do?”

Oliver has to think about that for a moment, because all Kyle ever did was love him. It was always Oliver who was the one doing. But his actions were always woefully misplaced.

Spring had come late to Pennsylvania their senior year with patches of dirty snow clinging to the ground well into April. But on the day of graduation, spring had finally awoken in all her glory. Balmy breezes, radiant sunshine, young, spring leaves emerging from their buds. The beautiful weather had only added to the excitement of the day. 

Oliver’s parents had driven out from Iowa. George had taken pictures of Oliver dressed in his ruby red cap and gown complete with honors ropes, in front of the student union. Barbara had sniffled into a handkerchief, proudly adjusting Oliver’s tassel so it brushed against his cheek as he walked.

It should have been a day that stands out in his memory as one full of accomplishment and potential. A degree earned. A life waiting to be met. But instead the only emotions Oliver remembers are desolation, abandonment and the very real feeling of a mangled heart.

Because the day he graduated from Llanview University was also the day Oliver came out of the closet. He can’t quite remember what exactly had flipped the switch in his head that made him realize he couldn’t live one more day denying his sexuality. He had woken up that morning still living in his very convincing bubble of denial but by the end of the day Oliver was among the ranks of the out and proud. 

Perhaps it had been the realization that he was leaving the safety of school for the “real world”. Perhaps it had been the graduation speaker who had talked about this being the time to define yourself, to take the experiences of college and use them to shape your future. Or perhaps it had simply been the empty seat between Andrew Lawson and Danielle Libby where Kyle should have been that reminded him of all the times in the past few months when Kyle should have been by his side and wasn‘t. 

It had been an impulsive decision. Something he hadn’t thought through. But one minute he was sitting in the stadium, sweating through the cheap, satiny fabric of his gown and the next he was racing across campus, his feet moving with all the alacrity that such sudden determination afforded him. He had known in the blink of an eye who he was and who he wanted to be with. And he didn’t fucking care who knew it anymore.

The door to Kyle’s room had been slightly ajar, and Oliver had slowed, catching his breath as he closed the last few feet. He could taste the words in his mouth, I’m gay. I love you. His heart had fluttered with anticipation, his lips already imagining what it would feel like to kiss Kyle again. The thought that he might reject him never even crossed his mind, so brazen had he been with his new found self-awareness. 

He had pushed open the door and instead of finding a waiting Kyle, he found nothing but an empty room. All of Kyle’s things were gone. The carpet rolled up. The posters taken down from the walls. The closets hanging empty of clothes. 

Kyle was gone. Oliver was too late. 

He’d staggered into the room which had still born the smell of Kyle’s cologne tinged with the slightest hint of smoke from the candles Kyle had liked to burn. He’d fallen onto bare mattress, desolate and shell shocked. There had been nothing else to do but cry and he had. He’d cried while off in the distance the marching band played the alma mater. He cried as other brothers returned, jubilant and laughing from the ceremony. Cried as time seemed to stand still, trapping him in this moment of anguish.

But he had not cried later that night as he’d stood in his parents hotel room and told them he was gay. He hadn’t cried when they reacted just like he’d expected. His mother hadn’t been able to look him in the eye, even after keeping his secret for the past 5 months. He hadn’t cried when George had kicked him out of the room, but not before making sure Oliver was fully aware of his disgust in him. He hadn’t cried because they didn’t matter anymore. He’d already lost the only person who did.

Oliver had pushed Kyle away with all the force of a steam engine and yet expected Kyle to wait for him with open arms. Just like he’d expected Kyle to keep their entire romance a secret and yet got jealous when other guys looked at him. He’d been terrible to Kyle, cruel and presumptive. He had expected everything from Kyle while giving so little of himself in return. So was it really any wonder that Kyle gave up and walked away?

Oliver looks at Nick, who is still waiting for an answer to his question, the realization tasting just as bitter today as it had then and says, 

“I guess you could say Kyle gave me exactly what I deserved.”

*

The next two mornings, it is him that Oliver thinks of first. Not the man whose body is wrapped languidly around his. The man who had spoken his name like a prayer as Oliver’s body slowly moved within him. Not Nick, but Kyle. 

He is distracted at work, listening intently to every conversation that goes on around him incase one of them happens to mention Kyle’s name as part of some sort of on going investigation. He stays up late at night searching for websites on his computer about all the possible rulings the judge might have made in Kyle‘s case. Finding addiction websites for more information about the repercussions of long term benzodiazepine and prescription amphetamine use. He catches himself staring off at nothing, thinking of how it felt being so young and so in love. Remembering how shattered he had felt after school ended and Kyle was gone forever.

He’d missed Kyle more in those weeks following graduation than he ever had when their relationship had actually ended because it was only then that he realized the true value of what he’d lost. He’d waited for any one of his phone calls, emails or letters to be answered , all of which begged Kyle in one way or another to just let him explain, but they never were. And if Oliver had needed any further proof that Kyle never wanted to see him every again, that had been it. 

He spent the summer after graduation in Llanview, no longer welcome at home and got an apartment with a few buddies from college. They had been the first people besides his parents he’d come out to and they had been amazingly supportive. 

It had been their suggestion that Oliver go to some of the gay bars in town. God bless them and their typical straight boy logic: “Your girl dumps you? You get a new girl.” But that hadn’t quite worked for Oliver, regardless of the gender of the person he was trying to replace. 

He had tried the bar scene. He’d let older and less emotionally vulnerable men hit on him and buy him drinks. He even went home with a few. But every morning when he’d wake up in a strange bed or stumble home to his apartment sometime before dawn with the smell of some other man‘s cologne clinging to his clothes, Oliver would feel more empty and depressed than before. He had quickly realized that the bar scene was not for him. One night stands felt like a poor substitute for actually being in love.

So instead he tried dating, engaging in a series of imperfect, short-lived romances that have all blurred together into one group of non-descript men who weren’t his first love and won’t be his last. 

He started his police training, quickly jumping to the top of his class. His mother called him at Christmas, saying his father might be alright with him coming home for Easter. He graduated, moved to Cherryvale, started working. Life somehow managed to move forward without the one person he’d thought indispensable. 

The hurt slowly dissipated until one day Oliver woke up and simply forgot to be sad. The wounds on his heart healed enough so that he could imagine a future where he loved someone else just as much as he had loved him. He hadn’t tried, hadn’t meant to, but he’d moved on. He’d gotten over Kyle. 

Hadn’t he?

The sights and sounds of the precinct come back into focus as realizes he has just wasted another twenty minutes thinking about spring break their junior year when he and Kyle had been the only two brothers left at the house. Kyle, after a good amount of cajoling and convincing that there was no way they‘d get caught, had given Oliver the most toe curling blow job of his life on top of the pool table. He hadn’t been able to play a round of pool there for the rest of college without blushing like a fool.

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters to himself, standing up and closing the cover of the report he is working on with a satisfying slam. He gathers up his coat, puts on his hat and heads for the door.

“Where are you going?” McBain’s voice stops him in his tracks.

Oliver spins back around, trying not to look caught. “The airport,” He answers quickly. “There are some patterns cropping up linking a specific air traffic controller to those suspicious flights. I wanted to go down and talk to the control tower director, see what he knows about the guy.”

McBain’s nods with stoic consideration. “I like your initiative. Strong work, Fish.”

Oliver hurries out the door before McBain can say anything further. This obsession with Kyle - or whatever the hell it is - has really gone too far if it is making him lie to his boss. 

He drives straight to City Hall. A flash of his badge gets him into the Hall of Records, a place where Joe Citizen would need to schedule an appointment. He is able to get his hands on Kyle’s sentencing from earlier in the week. He’d wanted the court transcripts, knowing there would be more information there, but it won‘t be available until the end of the week and simply can‘t wait any longer for answers. 

A young intern brings the file up from the vaults and Oliver barely even thanks him before ripping into the envelope. It is just a single page, typed up by the judges secretary. This is a good sign, he thinks, preparing to read. Longer verdicts usually mean bigger sentences.

Defendant, Mr. Kyle J. Lewis pleaded guilty to operation of a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol and Ativan a prescription anti-anxiety medication which had been prescribed by Dr. Evelyn Woodard of Llanview General Hosptial. Mr. Lewis was released on $2,500 bail. His driver’s license has been revoked for 18 months with potential for reinstatement after 12 with completion of safe driving course. Mr. Lewis was also in possession of Aderal, which he had stolen from Llanview General’s supplies. He was charged a fine of $25,000 dollars for this offense, to be paid over the next two months. However taking into consideration Mr. Lewis’s clean record and his mental state at the time of the arrest, any further action for the felony accounts of theft and possession of a controlled substance will be dropped and stricken from his record contingent on his self admission into Rocky Mount Rehabilitation Center for drug addiction treatment. 

“Rehab?” He breathes out loud. Jesus.

With out even a second’s hesitation, he tucks the file into the outer pocket of his messenger bag, knowing exactly where he is headed next.

*

Less than a half hour later, his fingers tap out an erratic rhythm on top of the registration desk at Rocky Mount Rehab Center.

The Center is located on the opposite side of town from City Hall, tucked back behind a strip mall between a bank and an office supply warehouse. It is a one story, red-brick building, the kind of generic industrial architecture so ubiquitous in middle America that one could drive past it a hundred times and never realize what it is unless you stopped to read the sign on the door. The facilities are clean and bright, not as sterile as a hospital ward but not as nice as an upscale retirement home either. It is a place where serious healing occurs and everything, from the motivational posters all over the walls to the massive calendar behind the desk where patients mark their initials, counting the number of days they have been clean, is there to remind them of that goal. 

A woman comes out from a small office behind the counter and smiles warmly. She is tall and thin, with wavy locks that fall loosely past her shoulders. She wears no makeup because she needs none, her golden skin perfect and her large, hazel eyes beautiful. Those eyes sweep over Oliver’s uniform and then down to where his fingers are still moving franticly against the countertop.

“Can I help you?” Her voice is calm and unassuming.

“I’m here to see Kyle Lewis.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” She says, as if she should have known that Oliver was coming. She opens a schedule book full of scribbled dates and names. “Usually Sabrina Arlington lets us know when we have someone from the LPD coming in for questioning. There must have been a mix up. We have a new person working the desk on Tuesdays, maybe he put you down in the wrong book…”

“I wouldn’t… be in any schedule book.” Oliver says, spreading his hands wide on the counter. 

She cocks her head gently. “Are you here to see Kyle on…unofficial business then?”

“Yes.” Oliver says, thankful she understands. “He’s an old friend of mine but we’d lost touch and I was at the station the morning after he got arrested and I…I just really need to talk to him.” Oliver stops himself. But from the look on the woman‘s face, he knows that if he blurted out the whole damn story she‘d stand there and listen patiently. 

She motions for him to join her in a small sitting area. Oliver slumps down in a chair, rubbing at his forehead. Being this distraught is awfully tiring. She pulls a chair up next to him, placing her palms primly on top of her knee caps. 

“I can tell this whole situation is quite upsetting to you. Sometimes it is more distressing not knowing how or why someone has gotten involved with drugs than finding out they are using them at all, especially since you say you haven‘t seen Kyle in a while.”

She hits the nail soundly on the head and Oliver lets out a massive breath. Damn these counselors are good, he thinks. A smile flashes over her face, one that goes all the way to her eyes, before her face is soothing and calm once more.

“Visiting hour is 6-7 daily. Why don’t you come back next week? Maybe Tuesday?”

“Tuesday? Why can’t I just come back toady?”

“It’s too soon. Kyle only got here yesterday and he is in a very delicate stage of his recovery. 80% of our patients don’t last the first few days, let alone the first week before they check themselves out.”

“They can do that?”

“This isn’t a prison,” She smiles softly. “I know you say you’re a friend, and it is critically important that Kyle have support from friends and family during this process, but not yet. For as well intentioned as you might be, we have no way of knowing who might be a trigger and make him want to use again.”

Oliver grimaces as McBain’s voice echoes in his head. He said it was your fault. 

“Give him some time to work on himself. That is why he is here after all. And then I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”

Oliver snorts softly. “I hope you‘re right.” 

The woman stands, patting his knee comfortingly as she does. When she is almost back behind the registration counter, she turns back. “One piece of advice for you when you do come back: I’d leave the uniform at home. Cops usually aren’t the most welcome sight in a place like this.”

Oliver blushes, his uniform suddenly feeling hot and tight. 

He lets his head fall back against the wall and sighs. The irresistible force that had been compelling him wildly forward all afternoon has just collided with a massive immovable object: the rules of regulations of Rocky Mount Rehab Center. There is nothing more he can do today but wait.

As he stands up, throwing his back over his shoulder, he realizes it might be for the best. After all, he still has to go to Llanview Airport to interview the air traffic control tower director unless he wants to face the full wrath of John McBain and take this already shitty week to down right horrific.

*

It is precisely 6:07 on the following Tuesday when Kyle walks through the door of the visitor’s lounge at Rocky Mount. Oliver knows this because he had been watching the minutes pass on the clock hanging on the wall from the moment he’d arrived. 

Really he had been counting down the minutes since the previous week and is firmly convinced the only way he was able to finish the work week and make it through the weekend without jumping out of his skin was knowing that this moment would come.

Oliver’s heart rate doubles as Kyle scans the room for the guest here to see him that he did not anticipate. 

Oliver stands and their eyes meet. He sees Kyle freeze, like a deer that has just been spotted by a hunter. Kyle presses a hand to his mouth, looking back towards the door as if gauging how quickly he could be back through it. But realizing it is too late to escape, he balls his hands into fists and makes hot to over to Oliver. 

His complexion is little improved from when Oliver had last seen him, still sickly pale and drawn. He looks tired and haggard. He moves to slowly that his jeans and shirt could have been made out of lead. But even through the weariness Oliver can see the faint outline of Kyle’s former attractiveness. Kyle had been so beautiful to him, youthful and masculine all at once. It hurts far more than anticipated to see him fallen so far. 

“How did you find me?” Kyle asks, dropping into the chair opposite him. 

Oliver blinks. He didn‘t have the whole conversation mapped out, but this was not exactly how he thought it would start. “I went to City Hall and got a copy of your sentencing.”

“They let people read that?” 

“Well,” Oliver begins sheepishly. “They let people like me read it.” 

Oliver had taken the woman’s advice from before and come in street clothes, a dark button down shirt and jeans, and it takes a moment for Kyle to understand what he means. 

“Oh, cop. Right.” He taps his forehead with his finger tips, reprimanding himself for not remembering something so simple. 

“How are you?” 

Kyle regards him bleakly. “What do think?”

Oliver flushes, feeling just as obtuse as Kyle had.

“Look, what are you doing here?” He asks.

“I’m not sure, really,” Oliver replies, then rolls his eyes. “No, that is complete bull shit. I know exactly why I’m here.”

He waits until Kyle gives him a cautious glance. 

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

The words tumble from his lips like the hormonally-driven, bumbling confession of a thirteen year old boy talking to his first crush, not the words of a 26 year old, sexually experienced man. But they are the truth, regardless of how ungraceful they sound. 

“I know it’s been a long time,” Oliver continues, trying to regain his composure. Kyle remains nonplussed. “But you were facing drug possession charges and courts usually don‘t take that kind of thing lightly. I was worried.”

When Kyle simply crosses his arms, looking at something over his shoulder to avoid looking at Oliver, he opts for a different tactic. I am here for answers so I can stop obsessing over this, he reminds himself. You’re not here to become Kyle’s best friend again.

“The judge’s sentence said that the anti-anxiety pills they found in your car were prescription. How long have you been taking those?”

Kyle sits forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His eyes narrow into disdainful little slits. “So that‘s why you‘re here, huh? You want to know how I fell apart.” It isn’t a question, but a grotesque accusation. “Thanks, Oliver.”

He winces. “It doesn’t sound very good when you put it that way.” 

“What other way is there to put it?”

“I’m just really confused.” Kyle turns slowly back towards him and Oliver scoots out to the edge of his chair. “The Kyle I knew in college could have a million plates spinning at once - seven classes a semester, fraternity vice-president, intramural soccer club member, ace student - who still had time to plan a party for Friday night. The Kyle I knew could handle anything life threw at him and would have a smile on his face when life added one more. The Kyle I knew wouldn’t need anti-anxiety medication and he certainly wouldn’t become…”

“What?” Kyle asks, when Oliver stutters. “Wouldn’t become what, Oliver? Addicted?” He leans towards Oliver, the space between them suddenly much smaller and emotionally charged. “Say it, Oliver, because it’s true. They’ve been teaching me all week to say it. ‘Hello, my name is Kyle Lewis and I’m a drug addict.’”

“Stop it.” Oliver hisses and Kyle sits back in his chair, realizing that he has made Oliver uncomfortable enough for the time being. He sighs, twisting his fingers together in a complicated knot between his knees.

“Look, I already told you. It’s not what it looks like. And obviously your magical, little cop badge can get you any other information you might want.”

“It can get me the ‘what’ and ‘where’,” Oliver interrupts. “But not the ‘how’ and the ‘why’. For that I need answers. From you.”

“And not knowing that is just driving you so crazy?”

“Yeah, it is.”

Kyle considers that briefly. “Why do you even care?” He asks, softly.

“We were friends once…” Oliver says, then as if truly uncertain asks, “Weren’t we?”

A surge of memory saturates Kyle’s eyes, leaving them dark and heavy. His gaze does not waver, not even for even one moment, as if daring Oliver to recall that yes, they had been friends. But so much more. 

He dares him to remember how things had started between them with little glances, moments when Kyle would catch Oliver staring and Oliver couldn‘t look away fast enough before heat would flare in his chest by the desire he saw in Kyle‘s eyes. Daring to remember their first uncertain kiss, shared in the gentle darkness of Kyle’s room where the only sound in their ears had been the sound of their shallow breathes, even while a massive keg party raged two floors below them. Dares him to remember those first trembling touches that Oliver was sure would be rebuffed but were only returned by an even surer hand.

Oliver stares back, meeting those conjured memories without fear and Kyle falters, unprepared for such a bold reaction. 

He clears his throat, uncrossing then re-crossing his legs. “Alright fine,” Kyle says, his voice more raspy than usual. “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you.”

Oliver nods, settling back in his own seat.

“You know that going to Med School was everything to me. Being a doctor was all I ever wanted.” He smirks, looking at Oliver through his lashes. “Kind of like you and being a cop. Anyway, I was nervous when I started about being older than most of the other students who were coming right out of school.”

“Wait, you didn’t go right from school? But you’d been accepted senior year.”

“How did you know that?”

Oliver blanches. All those months, when he was pretending that Kyle had never mattered, he still kept up with his life. He’d been so proud of him the day he over heard two pledges talking in awed tones about how Kyle had gotten into Llanview U School of Medicine, one of the best programs in the country. 

“We lived in the same frat house, Kyle. Kind of hard not to over hear news like that.”

“Right,” Kyle says sheepishly.

“What did you do instead?”

“I traveled, west coast, Europe. It was amazing and I’m glad I did it, but it meant I was behind. I’d forgotten some stuff I’d learned in school and my classmates still had all their studying muscles intact.”

Oliver can’t help himself. He laughs. “Studying muscles. Is that the official anatomical term they teach you in gross anatomy?”

A small chuckle bubbles up from Kyle’s chest. “Shut up,” he says suppressing a smile. His eyes are so different now. So warm and familiar. They look like they had, only briefly, in the cop car on the drive over to the court house. They look like the eyes of the man he had loved.

“So since I was behind, I worked extra hard. And it paid off. I did well, got good grades. We started rotations during our second year and it was the first time we were actually working with patients. I mean, sure we’d observed other MD’s and done practice work on each other, but this was different. This was real. You don’t know what it’s like, dealing with life and death situations everyday.”

“Actually, I know exactly what that‘s like,” Oliver says softly.

“Oh, right. Cop again.” 

They share a smile, eyes linking before dropping away furtively. Something about this feels far too easy.

“I was so afraid to make a mistake because I knew if I did, people could die. It went beyond me wanting to be perfect because wanting wasn’t enough. I needed to be perfect.” Oliver nods, understanding all too well. 

“Well, my attending physician, he started noticing how stressed out I was. More so than the other students and he suggested I see someone in the psych department. So, I met with Dr. Woodard. She was the one who gave me the Ativan.”

“And?” Oliver asks.

“And it worked,” Kyle shrugs. “It took the edge off just enough so that I wasn’t frozen by my worry, but I still had enough adrenaline to keep me sharp. I felt normal again.” He sighs, pushing his fingers through his hair. “But that’s about when my sister came back to town.”

“Rebecca?”

“Yeah,” Kyle nods. “She was with this guy, claimed she was in love with him but he was involved in some seriously messed up stuff. Like down right evil.” Kyle hands begin to clutch the arms of the chair, his anxiety rising even he talks. “And she wanted me to help her. Help him. But I wouldn’t fucking do it. It didn’t matter that she was my sister, I refused to get messed up with them. But then,” He drops his head back, throat working as he swallows painfully. “Then when she died…”

“Wait, Rebecca’s dead?” Oliver gapes, his heart leaping in his throat. “When did that happen? How?”

“About three months ago.” He says somberly. “There was an explosion linked to the guy. The papers called the Kappa Alpha Delta killer. He was in our frat, did you know that? She was in the building when it happened but they never found her body.”

“God, how could I not make that connection. The entire force was talking about finally catching that guy when I got transferred here. They had just caught him the week before. I should have figured that that was her. Kyle, I am so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. There was no way you could have known she was involved with that. Christ, I barely knew.” Kyle sniffs and rubs at his eyes, cutting off any tears before they start. “I was…pretty messed up after that. Angry and confused. I didn’t know whether to hate her more for being involved with something so disgusting or that because of her involvement she died and left me all alone. I had no one left, Oliver. For all her faults, Rebecca was the only family I had.”

For a moment, Oliver wonders what would happen if he reached out and took Kyle’s hand. It needn’t be misconstrued as anything other than a supportive gesture from an old friend, but Oliver is feeling lucky enough that Kyle is talking to him at all and clenches his hands into fists instead. 

“That was about the time the Ativan stopped working. The amount I was supposed to take just wasn’t cutting it anymore. So I started taking more. But then I’d show up for rounds in the morning and would be so groggy from the Ativan that I could barely stay awake. I never messed up, no one ever got hurt, but I wasn’t able to do my job correctly. So this guy, another guy in my year, he suggested I take some Aderal. It’s kind of like Ritalin,” He clarifies. “He said he’d been taking it for years to help him have some extra focus. But I’m such an idiot. I’ve taken pharmacology, I know what the risks are for drugs in that class, especially when combined with the drug I was already on. But I had no other choice, Oliver.” He looks up him, voice frantic and pleading. “It was either I take the drugs or I drop out of med. school. And I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t lose the only thing I had left. Of course, it’s what ended up happening anyway because here I am.” 

Oliver is speechless. He opens his mouth, but finds it void of any words that could possibly make this better. 

“Look, I gotta go. Group session is in a few minutes,” Kyle says sheepishly, worried perhaps that he has shared too much. He stands, sticking his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “Thanks. For coming.”

“I’ll come back,” Oliver blurts out, standing up too. The words of the woman with the kind, beautiful eyes that said Kyle would need support from friends and family ring through his ears. 

“You don’t have to.” 

“I want to.”

Kyle considers this for a moment, looking down as he kicks the toe of his shoe at the carpet. “Alright.” He nods once. “Tomorrow then.”

*

The next night at precisely 6 o’clock Oliver is back at Rocky Mount, sitting in the same chair as he had been in the night before. The visitor’s lounge is not a large room, but the worn couches and chairs are spaced out enough to give everyone their privacy. There is a TV mounted to the wall, playing a broadcast of the local news. The windows are covered by slatted shades and the smell of coffee, freshly brewed in an industrial sized pot in the corner, permeates the room. 

Oliver waits for Kyle’s arrival with less urgency in his veins tonight, replaced instead by a strange sense of anticipation. His eyes are not glued to the clock as they had been the night before, but when he finally does catch the time he is surprised that it is already 6:21 and Kyle isn’t there.

He wanders out to the lobby, sneaking looks around corners and hallways he is forbidden to go down before finally going to inquire at the front desk.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I’m here to visit Kyle Lewis, but he hasn’t shown up yet.”

“We told him you were here, but I’ll try calling his room again.” Oliver thanks him and the young man goes through a doorway and out of sight.

Oliver paces, watching as the street lamps flicker to life outside. It is spring time and every day the street lamps start their work a little later, the nights become just that much shorter. But perhaps in the intervening hours of darkness between last night and now, Kyle has come to realize he wants nothing to do with him. 

“Oliver.”

Kyle stands a few feet away, his arms hanging limply by his sides. His shoulders are bunched up by his ears and his eyes are puffy and raw. Yesterday he had almost looked normal, tired and deflated, but better than the day after he was arrested. But now he looks completely worn, as insubstantial and frail as a ghost. He looks, Oliver realizes with a clenching of his heart, like a drug addict. 

A shiver passes through Kyle’s trembling body and he wraps his arms around himself before sinking a little too quickly into a nearby chair, his head immediately falling forward between his knees. 

Oliver is there in an instant pressing a steady hand to Kyle’s back. 

“Are you alright?” He asks, hushed and concerned. 

Kyle nods but leave his face in his hands. 

Oliver is suddenly very aware of the way Kyle‘s body feels beneath him. The way his ribs expand with each shuddering breath. The way his skin feels just a bit too warm beneath his tee shirt. This body is so very different from the one he had known in college, ravaged by months of abuse and years of stress. And yet Oliver’s pulse quickens as he runs his hands over Kyle’s back in soothing circles, shamed at the way his own libido reacts to being so close to him again.

Eventually though, Kyle lifts his head and rolls his shoulders back, effectively shaking off Oliver’s hand in the process. He takes another centering breath.

“I don’t think I’ve gotten faint like that since the first day of gross anatomy lab.” There is a hint of amusement in his voice that makes Oliver smile. 

“What happened?”

“Well, you spend the whole day vomiting without keeping properly hydrated and then someone comes to drag you out of bed,” He looks squarely at Oliver. “You’re bound to get a little light headed.”

“Are you sick?” 

“No, Oliver,” Kyle says dully, “I’m in withdrawal.”

“Still? But you seemed ok the other day.”

Kyle looks down at his hands. “Yeah, today was the first day without any of the Ativan.”

Oliver’s brow furrows for a moment but then remembers something he had read online. “Oh right, you have to wean yourself off it, don‘t you? Take smaller and smaller doses because cutting it off cold turkey can cause heart palpitations, increased blood pressure even hallucinations.”

Kyle looks at him curiously, fighting off a smile that is amused, impressed and grateful all at once.

“Look at you, Dr. Fish.” 

Oliver laughs, a soft blush flooding his cheeks. “I did some reading about prescription amphetamine and benzodiazepine addiction when I found out that is what you‘d been on.” 

“They call it the death throes,” Kyle says sardonically. “Pleasant, huh?”

“I’m sure not at all.” A piece of hair has slipped out from behind Kyle’s ear and Oliver balls his hands into fists so he doesn’t reach out to tuck it back. “Is there anything I can do for you?” 

“You?” He snickers softly. “No, I don’t think so. I should probably just get back in bed.” 

“Of course,” Oliver says. He stands and offers Kyle a hand. He watches as a battle plays out behind Kyle’s eyes as he grapples between not trusting his sense of balance to stand up on his own and not wanting to look helpless in Oliver’s eyes.

“Kyle,” he insists, shoving his hand even further into Kyle face. With once last look, he takes hold of Oliver’s hand, pulling himself out of the chair. He moves too quickly and for a moment his head spins. He grabs onto Oliver’s shoulder. The grip on the hand he already holds, tightens. Eventually his eyes focus, but the tenacity of his grip does not lessen.

Oliver feels his heart race. Kyle is so close now. It would be so easy to lean forward those few inches and brush his lips with his. Even more effortless to take Kyle in his arms, and hold him so tight that he could make some of this suffering his own. 

Instead they stand there, hands clasped, bodies close, the air crackling between them with memory and possibility. 

“I’m sorry I made them drag you out of bed,” Oliver whispers.

“Yeah, you really can’t take a hint when you’re being stood up, can you?”

“Now, why would you stand me up? Hot date like me?”

Kyle’s eyes dart to his and it is only then that Oliver realizes what he just said and they way he said it. He had flirted, playful and sexy. Just like he would with some hot guy he met. Just like he used to with Kyle. It is the first time either one of them has even intimated at what things used to be, that once upon a time a hot date would not have been so out of question. 

He feels breathless and a little light headed himself, the sound of his blood rushing through his veins as loud as a steam engine. Tentatively, he sneaks his hand gently around Kyle’s back, curling his fingers gently into the fabric of his shirt. Just a gentle press of his fingertips, a shuffle of feet and Kyle is in his arms. He sighs and hears Kyle’s breath hitch. It is almost overwhelming. This sublime reminder of how they had been; this hint of what still burns between them. 

“I gotta go,” Kyle says, ripping himself away from Oliver roughly like a bandage from a wound. 

“Kyle, wait.”

He stops but does not turn. 

“I’ll come back tomorrow. Make sure you‘re ok.”

“Why?” He asks, shoulders slumped as if he can’t take much more. 

“Because I want you to know that you’re not alone. You have me, Kyle.” Then in an emphatic whisper, adds, “You always have.”

Kyle turns his head, looking over his shoulder. His eyes are burdened with years of resignation. 

“Oh, Ollie,” He sighs. “I never had you.”


	3. Chapter 3

Those words linger, carving out an emptiness in his chest so vast he can hear his heartbeat echo within it.  It feels like the summer after college all over again, a painful reminder of how completely he failed Kyle.  Wounding himself in the process.    
  
He can barely look Nick in the eye that night, let alone make love to him when he feels Nick’s hand, flat and warm against the plane of his stomach.  He rolls over and pretends to be asleep, but sleep does not come.  Not for hours.  Nick leaves the next morning without a word.   
  
He is useless at work.  He goes through the motions of being Lt. Oliver Fish, laughing at Sergeant Miller’s stupid jokes, brainstorming with McBain about possible motivations behind a series of thefts.  But all the while, his entire conscious mind is trapped on an endless loop that alternates between their breakup, Kyle’s empty dorm room and those haunting words from the night before.  He briefly wonders if this is what his hell will look like.     
  
He can’t bring himself to go see Kyle that evening, too afraid of seeing that empty, forlorn look in his eyes again and knowing he put it there.  Perhaps Kyle had been right after all.  Perhaps this is all his fault.  
  
But by Friday, his desolation has morphed into desperation and it is with that emotion supporting him that he is able to return to the Rehab center on Friday night.    
  
Just after 6 the next day, the residents of Rock Mount start wandering into the visitor‘s lounge.  They all move with the slow pace of people who have no where else to be.  There are older men whose tired wives bring them clean shirts and cigarettes, looking like they‘ve been through this routine before.  Teenagers who sit cross-legged and indignant, refusing to talk to their stricken parents.  Young girl friends who cry when they find out their boyfriend is no longer here, that he checked himself out earlier and they have no idea where he’s gone.  
  
There are very few happy faces here.  Addiction recovery is a lifelong process and rehab is not a guarantee for success.  The only smiles Oliver sees are the cautious few of those who are almost ready to venture back out into the real world.  
  
So perhaps that is why even the slightest lift of Kyle’s lips when he walks in the room to see Oliver sitting there is enough to feel like a ray of sun cutting through the clouds after days of rain.    
  
He has a healthy flush to skin; his eyes are clear and unburdened.  He almost looks…like himself.    
  
“You look good,”  Oliver says as Kyle sits.    
  
“Thanks, I feel good.  It‘s amazing what a difference a day makes.”    
  
“You need a shave though,”  Oliver comments.  
  
“You think?”  Kyle asks, rubbing at his chin.  “I don’t know, I was thinking about growing it out.  You know, grow a rehab beard just like those hockey players grow playoff beards.”  
  
Oliver looks at him, horrified both at how flippantly Kyle talks about being in rehab and perhaps even more so by the thought of Kyle with a beard.  
  
“I’m kidding, Oliver,”   Kyle says, slaps Oliver’s knee good playfully.  “I’d look ridiculous with a beard, a goatee maybe but…”  He sits back in his chair, crossing an ankle over a knee.   “I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”    
  
Oliver looks up at, taken by the sudden insecurity that has crept into Kyle’s voice.      
  
“I told you I would.”    
  
“Yeah, but after you didn’t come yesterday…”  Kyle trails off with an apologetic shrug, clearly thinking of what he‘d said.  “Surely you must have some place better to be on a Friday night.”  
  
“Oh right, it’s Friday…I’d forgotten.  Well you know,  _usually_  I’d be cutting up Llanview’s massive club scene…”  Kyle laughs sharply, the sound like lightening slashing through darkness in Oliver‘s chest.    
  
“No, I’d probably either be home or putting in some extra hours at work.”  He answers more seriously.  
  
“Got a wife that keeps you tied close to home?”  
  
Oliver lifts up his left hand and waggles his naked ring finger for Kyle to see.  
  
“A girlfriend then?”  His voice is a feeble attempt at casual as he toys with the laces of his sneaker.   
  
“Kyle, if you want to ask me, just ask.”    
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  He bristles.    
  
Oliver leans forward on his elbows.   
  
“Ask me what you what you really want to know. Ask me,” He pauses, “If I have a boyfriend?”  
  
Kyle’s eyes become dark and stormy as they flit from his still busy fingers to Oliver‘s face.    
  
“I don’t need to ask you.”  He bites at the insides of his lips.  “Because I already know.”  Oliver pales, his mouth taking on that horrible metallic taste of panic.    
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I saw you, alright?”  
  
“What do you mean you saw me?”  
  
“The night I got arrested.  I saw you.  With him.”        
  
Oliver sputters for several seconds, no words coming to his lips.  “What?”  He finally manages.  “Where?  How?”  
  
Even in his wretchedness, Kyle manages to laugh, sardonic and sinister as it may be.  “God you’re such a cop.”  He sighs heavily.    
  
“I was at the bar after a long shift at the hospital.  I knew I shouldn’t have been drinking considering how many pills I’d taken, but I don’t know, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to be making good decisions, obviously.  And I was sitting at the bar when who should walk in but my old flame, Oliver.  You were smiling and laughing at something.  You looked good.  You looked …happy.  It had been a long time since I’d seen you like that.”  He adds softly and Oliver’s heart clenches.  “And then I saw the guy who came in after you.  This tall, gorgeous, Latino guy.”  
  
“His name is Nick.”      
  
“Whatever,” Kyle brushes off sternly.  “He had his hand on your back and you looked at him with those eyes of yours.  Those soft, blue eyes.  It was the way you only used to look at me.  And I knew.”  
  
Oliver remembers that night.  He and Nick had met up for a drink before heading home.  They had feasted on each other that night, keeping on the edge of climax for hours with kisses with touches and lust that seemed unquenchable.  That passion seems so misplaced now, almost making him ill.     
  
“I couldn’t quite believe it,”  Kyle continues.  “You.  In public.  With a man.  I knew he was your lover or your boyfriend.  Your partner.  It either meant that you’d finally come out or that this  _Nick_ ,”  He sneers the name.  “Was happy living with you in the closet.”  
  
“I’m not in the closet.”  
  
“No?”  He scoffs.  “Then what are they calling it these days?”  
  
“No, Kyle, I’m out.  To my friends.  At work.  To my parents.”  
  
“Your parents?”  Kyle’s eyebrows shoot up his face.  He snorts derisively.  “I’m sure George and Barbara must have loved that.”    
  
“They reacted about as poorly as I‘d always expected.  Things will probably never be the same with my dad, but at least he lets me come home now and he’ll talk to me on the phone occasionally.  You’d think after four years they would finally get over it…but he’s getting better.  We’re getting better.”  
  
“Four years?”  Kyle breathes, the math slowly coming together in his head.  “Wait…When did you come out?”  
  
Oliver swallows, clasping his hands between his knees.  “Graduation.”  
  
“Graduation?”   
  
“I told my parents that night.”  
  
It would not seem possible for a man to look both completely devastated and livid at once, but Kyle is doing a good job trying.  His chest rises and falls with uneven breaths and his eyes become glossy as he tries to contain himself, torn between bursting into tears or punching Oliver in the face.      
  
“So after all the bull shit you put us through, put me through… little Oliver Fish decides to swim with the big gay sharks and doesn’t even get bitten.”  He laughs, a short, disdainful snort.  “If that isn’t some pathetic commentary on the bull shit of karma I don’t know what is.”  
  
Kyle stands, making a beeline for the coffee pot.  He takes no heed for who or what he bumps into along the way, leaving a trail of indignant expressions and upended furniture in his wake.  Oliver follows after him, making apologies where appropriate and righting the chair.  He hovers next to him, watching as Kyle hastily grabs a paper cup, his hands trembling as he fills it right up to the brim.  
  
“What the hell do you mean, Kyle?”  
  
“I sat there, watching you, all fucking night.  The way you laughed and flirted with him, you were so comfortable in your own skin.  And you weren’t behind some dorm room door or hiding in anyone’s closet.  You were in public, giving him everything I’d always wanted.  Everything that I’d fucking deserved!  So I took one shot.  And then another.  And then another.  I knew I was drunk and shouldn‘t drive, but I couldn’t sit there one second longer.  So I got in my car and got pulled over. And now I’m here.  All thanks to you.”  
  
Oliver feels weak, his mind spinning.  He can’t think.  He can barely breath.  There are a million things he could have said that could have soothed this situation, but the words that come out aren’t on that list.  
  
“So that’s why you said it?  That’s why you said this is my fault when you got arrested?  It‘s not because of what I did to you in college but because you saw me with Nick?”  
  
The coffee pot settles back on to its burner with a clatter, dropped by Kyle’s unsteady hand.   Some of the coffee sloshes over the sides, hissing as it comes in contact with the hot surface.   
  
“Is that why you came here?”  He jeers, his eyes so narrow they look almost black. “All this bull shit about wanting to help me and be there for me, when all you were really looking for was to placate your own conscience?  Well fine Oliver,”  He scoffs wildly, making a grotesque sign of the cross in Oliver’s direction.  “I absolve you of your sins.  You don’t need to worry one minute more about how you hurt poor little Kyle Lewis.  I mended the heart you broke years ago.”  
  
Kyle rips two sugar packets over his cup.  Only half the granules end up in his coffee, the rest fall over the counter like icy snow, but Kyle doesn’t seem to care.  He takes a large gulp, the liquid surely scalding his throat all the way down.   
  
“Kyle there is something I need to tell you, something about the night that I came out.”   
  
“I don’t want to hear it,” he bites out.   
  
“Yes, Kyle, trust me, you really do,” Oliver insists.  “Because the thing is before I told my parents I…”  
  
“Alright, ladies and gents, time’s up.”  The voice of one of the Center employees cuts him off mid sentence, falling between them like a guillotine.  “Time to say your good byes for tonight.”    
  
“Fuck!”  Oliver swears, looking around the room desperately.  “You’ve got to be kidding me!  That can’t have been an hour?”  
  
No one else seems to care.  People are standing, stretching out weary limbs, hugging and shaking hands.  Kyle simply keeps his back to the room and his eyes in his cup.   
  
“I can’t believe this.”  Oliver says, pressing his fingers to his forehead. “Look…I’ll come tomorrow.”  
  
“No.  I don’t want you to come back here.”  Kyle enunciates carefully so there is no mistake.  “Not tomorrow.  Not ever.”    
  
Oliver stares at him.  “Why, Kyle?”  
  
“Because this, Oliver…”  He hisses.  “This is rock bottom!”  He flings his arms wide expressing the magnitude of the disaster that is his life but then his eyes fall on Oliver becoming soft and pain-ridden. “And every time I see you,”  His voice cracks.  “I’m reminded what it felt like to be on top of the world.  So please, just go.”  
  
Oliver grabs onto Kyle‘s bicep, words failing him once more. “Kyle…” he whispers.     
  
“Please.”  Kyle begs.  That single words drips with so much sadness.  Those chocolate brown eyes are so  mournful.  Oliver’s throat tightens and he wants to take that sadness away if only Kyle would let him explain.    
  
“Is there a problem, gentlemen?”  
  
The same employee who had announced the end to visiting hours speaks up from behind them.  He wears that same patient expression all the employees here seem to, but he eyes Oliver’s grasp on Kyle with a good deal of caution.  Oliver doesn’t blame him.  
  
He releases his grip on Kyle’s arm but keeps his eyes, stinging with sudden tears, firmly fixed on him as he answers,  “Nothing you can fix.”  
   
*  
  
John McBain always reminds Oliver that when there is a case he can’t quite break or a motive he can’t quite sort out, he should go back to the beginning.    
  
Well the case he can’t break is what will become of him and Kyle.  And the motive he can’t quite sort out is why Kyle suddenly wanted nothing to do with him and this…well, this is their beginning.  
  
And all things being equal, the parking lot of the Kappa Alpha Delta fraternity house is a good a place as any for Oliver to break down.  
  
He had gone home first, tears still welling in his eyes. But Nick had been there, making him feel guilty for seeing Kyle at all.  His usually kind and sympathetic voice made ugly with jealousy.   
  
“Maybe if you had been here with your actual boyfriend instead of trying to reignite some old flame, you wouldn’t  be in such a fucking awful mood.”  
  
“You know what, Nick?  I’m really not in the mood for some jealous wife routine right now.  Especially from you!  We’re not married.  You’re not my partner.  I’m not even in love with you.” he’d yelled.    
  
Nick had yelled back.  He isn’t sure if Nick will be there when he gets home.  He’s not sure if he cares.  
  
It’s Friday night and the frat house is alive, inside and out.  It is one of the oldest houses on campus, beautiful grey-stone Federal style building with wood paneled walls and a wide sweeping staircase that becomes more and more narrow the higher you go.  It is a house that would look stately and austere if it weren’t inhabited year after year by a raucous bunch of young men, more interested in using the space for parties than to preserve the architecture.    
  
From where he sits in his car, he can look up to the fourth floor corner bedroom.  The heavy bass-line of some song blares from the window, occasionally punctuated by peals of laughter.  Room 405 is considered amongst the brothers to be the best room in the house and Kyle was only able to get it Junior year when he was elected VP of the fraternity.  It has a huge bay window looking out over the quad and an attached bath, a bathroom that afforded them privacy and freedom to spend the night together they would never have had otherwise.  
  
He can still remember exactly how the room was decorated, how safe and warm he felt between those four walls.  Oliver had encountered his true self for the first time there; had faced his darkest fears and had learned how vicious those fears had the potential to make him.    
  
Oliver squeezes the steering wheel, the dashboard lights glowing a soft blue.  He feels hot and cold at once, like he might have a fever.  His throat is tight and he wouldn’t be surprised if at some point his dinner makes another appearance.  But mostly he just feels numb.  All his emotion blurred together into one blinding white shock.    
  
He watches as two brothers haul a case of beer up the front steps while a pack of girls, who look far too young to be drinking, giggle behind them.  Oliver is a cop and he should be dealing with this situation, but right now he simply lets them.   _Let them breaks the rules_ , he thinks.   _Let them make their mistakes while they don‘t matter._  
  
But Oliver is proof that those old mistakes can still haunt you.  That just because you are young and allowed to be stupid, doesn’t make those mistakes hurt any less.  That choices you make to protect yourself can wind up hurting those you care about in ways you’d never imagined.  If he could go back, he would change so much.  He wouldn’t have been so afraid to admit to being gay because living with the constant worry that your secret might be exposed is far more frightening.  He would never have broken things off with Kyle, not for any reason.  He would fought for that love, not letting anything come between them.  He would have never given up.  
  
Never.  
  
A sharp rap of knuckles on glass shakes him out of his thoughtful daze.  It’s a KAD brother, probably wondering what this old guy is doing sitting in their parking lot.  Oliver rolls down his window.  
  
“Can I help you, man?”    
  
“All hail, Kappa Alpha Delta.”  Oliver intones.  
  
A small smile tugs at the corner of the kids mouth and he sticks his open hand through the window.  “Once, always, long live.”  
  
They shake hands, a complicated series of twists and tugs and squeezes.  Even when Oliver was pledging KAD, he thought a “secret” handshake sounded dorky.  Even for him.  But now it gives him credibility.  
  
“You from a different chapter?”  The young man asks once Oliver has passed the test.  
  
“No, I’m an LU Kappa Delt.  I graduated a few years ago.”  
  
The kid nods.  “You wanna beer or something?”  
  
“No, thanks.”  Oliver says, starting the ignition.  “I got some place I need to be.”  
  
*  
  
The front door is locked when he gets there.  
  
Oliver cups his hands around his eyes and leans against the glass to see into the lobby.  He can barely make out the bowed head of the night attendant sitting behind the reception desk, a small desk lamp the only light.  He taps on the glass with his keys and the head snaps up.  He pushes a button behind the desk and the door opens with an high pitched buzz.    
  
All is silence at Rocky Mount.  It is after nearly 1 am and all the residents must be asleep.  The only sound is a faint hum from the florescent lights over head, half of which are turned off to save electricity, making the ceiling look like some glowing chess board.  
  
“Can I help you?”    
  
The attendants words are weighty, because an offer for “help” means so much more here.  Oliver blinks, shaking his head and reaches for his badge.  
  
“I’m Lt. Oliver Fish, with Llanview PD.  I need to speak with Kyle Lewis.”  
  
“Now?”  
  
“I realize it’s late, but I would appreciate it if you went to get him.”  
  
“I can’t do that,”  The attendant says, nonplussed.  “Guests are only allowed during visiting hours.”  
  
“Look,”  Oliver starts, leaning over the desk ominously.  “I appreciate your rules.  I’m a cop.  Rules are my life.  But if you don’t go get Kyle Lewis for me right now, I  _will_  arrest you for interfering with an ongoing investigation.”  
  
It’s all bluster and show, but it works.  The kid, a young guy probably just out of his college with his counseling degree, pales, gulping as he looks at the badge shoved in his face and finally scurries off to the resident’s rooms with a slew of apologies in his wake.    
  
Oliver takes a seat in the same row of chairs where he had talked with the female counselor.  He’d felt so confused that day, almost on a rampage to get answers from Kyle.  But tonight, the only thing that matters is that Kyle understand him.  
  
“What the fuck, Oliver?”    
  
Kyle’s voice is ruff and craggy and he rubs at his eyes as he walks towards him.  He waits while the attendant grabs his lap top and tucks into the back office, leaving the lobby empty aside from them.  
  
“It’s after 1 am.”  
  
“I know, I’m sorry.  Did I wake you?”  
  
“No, I was awake but…” He sighs, crossing his arms over his middle and pressing one hand to the back of his neck.  “I thought I made myself clear.”  
  
“You did.  You absolutely did,”  Oliver says, putting his palms up in front of him.  “You don’t want to see me anymore, and as much as that hurts me, I’ll respect that.  But there is something I have to tell you.  I can’t live with it if I don’t.”  
  
The lobby suddenly feels far too exposed a space to speak of such private things.  He looks over Kyle’s shoulder to the visitor’s room.    
  
“Not here.”  He says.  “There.” He jerks his chin in the direction of the room and bushes past Kyle into the other room.    
  
He stands, listening as Kyle’s hesitant footsteps follow behind him, changing as he crosses over from the hard industrial tile of the lobby to the carpet of the room.  He rests against the wall, arms crossed, waiting.  
  
“I came to you that day,” Oliver tells  him.  “The day of graduation, before I told my parents, I came to you to tell you.  You were the first person, the only person I really wanted to tell.  Because I was sick of hiding the truth about being gay.  I was so… sure all of a sudden and I wanted you to know that.”  He presses on even though he can feel his throat tighten.  
  
“All I wanted was to be with you. and tell you all those things that I’d been too stupid and too afraid to say before.  But that day I knew I was gay, that I loved you and I didn‘t care anymore who knew.”  His voice cracks a little and there is just enough light filtering in from the parking lot through the slatted shades to see a painful grimace pass over Kyle’s face.             
  
“You weren’t at graduation, so I figured you’d be in your room but it was empty.  But you were gone, Kyle.  You’d left that morning.  I was too late.”  He takes a cautious step or two closer, moving slowly for fear that he‘ll just slip out of the door and that will be the end of everything.     
  
“Do you know what that felt like, Kyle?  How much it hurt?”  Oliver asks softly.  “To realize that I’d lost you completely?”    
  
Kyle turns his face away, pressing his eyes closed and his lips into a bleak line.  When he turns back, his eyes are glowing with unshed tears.    
  
“Do I know how that feels?”  He rasps.  “Yes.”    
  
In two bold steps, Oliver is next to him, capturing the remainder of that gasped syllable on his tongue.      
  
Kyle freezes, his whole body tensing against Oliver’s unexpected kiss but only for a moment.  With another sound of desperation at the back of his throat all resistance melts away.  His mouth opens, lips slipping deliciously, tongue seeking contact.  He balls his hands into the front of Oliver‘s shirt, pulling him closer.  
  
Oliver feels heat flood his face as he cups Kyle’s jaw.  He feels that same shameless, delirious determination that had inhabited him all those years ago when he had marched across campus, ready to claim Kyle and his own life in the process.    
  
He has kissed Kyle a thousand times, a million, but they have never kissed like this.  Without any hint of insecurity or shame that had been like a narrow veil between them even at the best of times.  This kiss tastes of adulthood and growth and second-chances and it is perfect.   
  
Oliver is winded and pathetically turned on by the time the kiss breaks.  He doesn’t dare look in Kyle’s eyes; his control over his body is too tenuous to risk it.    
  
It’s been two weeks since Kyle came back into his life and yet nothing is the same.  He remembers the dread at hearing Kyle’s name again, almost as if he knew his life would get completely thrown into disarray if he were reintroduced into it.  He remembers not understanding how someone as steadfast and confident as Kyle could wind up relying on drugs.  And he remembers the way the sunlight had played across Kyle’s face in the backseat of the squad car as he tried to figure out why Kyle blamed all of this on him.  And now, standing here, his lips still swollen from Kyle’s kiss, he feels freer than he perhaps ever has.  
  
“Do you know how long I‘ve waited to tell you that?”  
  
“About four years?”  Kyle smirks.  Oliver laughs softly through his nose and rests his forehead on Kyle‘s.  He threads both his hands, again and again through Kyle‘s ruffled locks.           
  
“I’ve missed you so much,”  He breathes into the small space between them.  “I don’t think I realized how much losing you killed me until I saw you again.”  
  
“I know,”  Kyle whispers.  His voice is choked, as if he is holding some further emotion back.  Oliver pulls away to look at him.  
  
“Hey…If you’re freaked out cause I’m still seeing Nick, you shouldn’t be.  Things between us aren’t serious.   They never were.  And I’m not even sure there is an ‘us’ anymore.  He hasn’t been too happy about you coming back into my life.”    
  
Kyle smiles, shaking his head.  “No, it’s not that.”  
  
“Then what?”  Kyle looks away, but Oliver catches his chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing their eyes to stay linked.  “What?”  
  
“That night that I saw you at the bar, I couldn’t help thinking that I’d never been enough for you.  That our love hadn’t been enough.  I know what you had to lose by coming out.  But when I saw you with this other guy, I realized that this guy or some other guy had been enough.  But to find out now that…it had been…”  His voice is little more than a brittle whisper when he finishes.  
  
“Oh, Kyle,” Oliver nearly sobs.  “You were the only reason.  It was because of you.  Your strength, your love that I was brave enough to come out.”   
  
“I don’t feel very strong anymore.”  Kyle shrugs his shoulders limply.  “Look at me, Ollie.  My life’s a fucking mess.  Even when I get out of here, I’ll have nothing.”  
  
“You’ll have me,”  Oliver says intently.  Kyle bites his lip, looking unconvinced.  Oliver places his hands firmly on Kyle’s shoulders.  
  
“Look,” He begins.  “I can never take back what I did to you in college and you can’t undo what you’ve done to yourself.  We can’t…un-break what we’ve already broken.”  Oliver takes a step closer to Kyle, their eyes locking.  “But we can move forward and build something new.  Something that will be even more amazing than before.  Together.”  
  
Their next kiss is far less impassioned, but Oliver will cherish the memory of it with equal fondness as the first of a million more they will share in their new future together.  
  
“You should get some sleep,”  He says some minutes later as they wander, hand in hand, out into the lobby.  The night attendant has returned to his post behind the desk and he glances up at them with a soft smile. The emotional roller coaster ride of the day has finally come to an end and the weariness has settled in.  He can only imagine how much more exhausted Kyle must be.   
  
“Yeah.  Sleep would be good.” Kyle stretches his back with a groan.  “The beds here are awful.  I can‘t wait to get back home.”  
  
“How much longer will you stay? Do you think?”    
  
“Until I’m ready to leave, I guess.”  
  
The answer is vague on purpose and as much as Oliver wishes he could take him to his bed and not come out for another week, Oliver knows that Kyle needs to be here.   
  
The lights in the lobby seem brighter now.  The room feels bigger.  The midnight sky beyond the wide glass window doesn’t seem quite so dark.  There is a sense of rightness in his chest, a sense that everything that had been out of order has been realigned.   
  
“So…tomorrow?”  Kyle asks, his voice warm and hopeful. “6 o‘clock?”  Oliver smiles back at him and nods.   
  
“I’ll be there.”    
  
*  
  
Epilogue  
  
Nick is waiting up for him when he gets home.  He sits on the arm of the sofa, facing the door.  His arms are crossed and his head is bowed.  There is a small overnight bag by his feet and for as euphoric as Oliver feels about Kyle, he can’t help the twinge of pain he feels at this little scene.  
  
Nick lifts his face, his checks still wet.  “Where were you?”  He asks.  
  
The guilt must have been so clearly written on his face because all Oliver manages to get out is a soft, “Nick, I…” before he is cut off.  
  
“You know what, don’t bother.  I know where you were.”  Nick sniffs and brushes some of the wetness off his face.  He picks up the coat hanging over the back of the couch that Oliver hadn’t noticed and drapes it over his arm.  “I don’t want to hear what it because knowing you, you’ll manage to make it sound all gallant and romantic and right now I just really need to hate you.”  
  
Oliver says nothing because as deeply as those words cut, he can’t deny that they are true.    
  
“I’ll come get my things later,”  Nick says, taking the house key off his key chain.  “Just call me and let me know when you won’t be here.”    
  
“Where will you go?”  
  
“I already called Amelia.  She knows I‘m coming.”  He presses the key into Oliver‘s palm.  “I hope you’re happy,”  He says gently, the words lacking any of the cruelty that would be his right.  “I mean that.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Nick.”  Oliver curls his fingers around the key, small and cold in his hand.  “I mean that too.”    
  
Oliver presses his forehead against the door.  The apartment suddenly feeling very still and empty.  Nick really had been too good to him.  
  
And yet, Oliver finds it hard to spend too much time on thoughts of regret.  Not when there is so much love to be had.  
  
Kyle spends another two weeks at Rocky Mount, everyday looking and feeling more whole.  The counselors work their magic, helping him learn to live inside his own head without the numbing effects of the drugs.  He puts on weight, loses that pinched bleakness around his eyes.  He steps back into his life, regaining control of the sails.  
  
And Oliver is there, every night, to witness the transformation.  They talk and they reconnect.  They heal what can be mended and remember dreams, once abandoned, that can now  be resumed.  They flirt with their eyes, sneaking small touches and kisses which, for all their innocence, leave them both flushed and achingly hard every time.  It is a two week study in foreplay, a prelude to a first date that will be nothing if not fiery.    
  
Finally, the day comes when Oliver finds himself outside Kyle’s apartment.  The sunlight dapples through the leaves on the trees much as it had the day of graduation, a soft spring sunshine that gave hints of the summer warmth yet to come.  Oliver’s heart feels just as full today as it had then and he bounds up the steps, taking two at a time.  
  
Kyle is waiting for him, leaning against the door frame with a lopsided grin on his face so wide it that might look goofy if it didn’t look so damned adorable.   
  
“You’re early,”  He says.    
  
“Can you blame me?”  Oliver asks. “It’s our first date.”    
  
“You’re right.  So where the hell are my flowers?”  
  
“Ha, ha, ha,” Oliver drones, leaning in for a breathless kiss.  Kyle cups his jaw, holding him in place, lengthening the duration.  They both pull away smiling.  
  
“I suppose it has been a long time coming, huh?”  Kyle asks, passing his thumb softly over Oliver‘s cheek.  
  
“Too long.”  
  
“So tell me Lieutenant Fish -”  He drops his hands to Oliver’s chest, eyeing the top button as if he very much wants to undo that one and all the rest.  “What are the laws about telling someone you love them on your first date?”  
  
“Well…”  Oliver drawls, pulling a face of such deep consideration that his eyes almost close.  “Usually, professions like that are strictly forbidden.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“But for you,”  he says.  “I think an exception can be made.”  
  
Kyle smiles, his dark lashes falling on his cheeks, adjusting his weight from foot to foot. “I love you, Oliver.”  
  
For a moment, Oliver savors the way those four simple words make him feel, noticing the way the setting sun brings out the highlights in Kyle’s hair, the way his voice rumbles over the syllables of his name.  
  
He gathers Kyle up in his arms, pressing his face into the soft crook of his neck.  
  
“I  love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since it's a soap, I certainly let myself be a little more cheesy than usual. Still, I think it holds true to these guys.


End file.
